The Sign of the Book (22 page)

“I really think he's leaving town, Preacher. Last time I saw him he was walking down to the bus station.”

The moment ripened. “So what happens now?” he said.

“I guess we wait for those cops you were about to call.”

“I don't think so.”

I could see his attitude changing by the moment. From fear he had become antagonistic. I had nothing on him and he was beginning to know it: If I had any proof of anything, where were the cops? A slimy smile now spread across his face. “You're not gonna do a thing, are you?”

“We'll see.”

“Wally, get in the car and go get your brother.”

“Listen, Preach—”

“Will you just shut up for once in your life and do as you're told? This guy's got nothing on us, nothing. If he tries to stop us, I'll sue his socks off. Go get Willie.”

Wally came toward me. “Move, Janeway.”

“Or what?”

“Or I'll move you.”

“You tried that in California, fatso.”

He kept coming and I backed out onto the ramp. I eased down the iron staircase and around the truck, till I could see Todd standing at the driver's door. How easy to grab the keys: easy and so illegal. But I was out of options.

“I'm not gonna tell you again, Janeway, get out of here. If we go at it again, it'll have a different ending this time.”

I moved out of his way and he grinned. “That's better,” he said, easing stealthily around the truck toward the station wagon. He looked like he was about to hyperventilate with fear. I could've nailed him then: he was a sucker for a punch of almost any kind, but I let him go past to the station wagon and watched him drive away. When I looked up the ramp, the Preacher was in shadow, but I sensed that a deeper change had come over him. “Go ahead, stand out there all night,” he said. “You've got nothing on anybody.” He backed into the warehouse and left me out in the dark.

We sat in the car, watching the building from a grove of trees down the road. Wally returned with Willie in half an hour. Willie looked pretty despondent. He stood outside for a moment, then trudged up the ramp and disappeared inside. We sat in the car, in plain sight for anyone who looked our way. Wally hadn't bothered to look but the Preacher knew we were still here: he had come to the door once and given us a long, hard look down the length of the rutted dirt road in the light of the distant streetlamps.

“What's he gonna do?” Todd said at one point.

“He's gonna finish loading those books and then they'll all drive away.”

“You gonna stop him?”

I laughed drily. What did I know? The Preacher had visited the murder victim at least a few times during the past year. Nothing illegal in that. They had talked in the victim's home, and that, for all we knew, had been the extent of their dealings with each other. The only witness who could place them together at all was the dead man's wife, who wasn't paying attention and barely remembered the Preacher visiting.

Of course they might have met any number of times in town, in Chicago, Rio, or in Cape Town. Perhaps they were hatching the second coming of Hitler, or maybe they were old pals from way back, who were just catching up with each other.

So what did I know? Nothing. What did I think? I figured Marshall and the Preacher were involved in a book scam together. The Preacher had scouted the books and Marshall was able to get them signed. What mattered was that they be cheap books, easily found for a few bucks in junk shops and bookstores. The Preacher made up a list, a roster of authors to look for. He and his boys traveled and found the books and Marshall got them signed—by a bunch of people who were dead by then.

Pretty good work if you can do it.

These books were by or about people whose signatures were worth something on the face of it. Personalities, not just your average Joe–schmuck writer types. At some point the Preacher or his boys would come back and pick up the signed books from Marshall's mountaintop. They'd leave him some more, take away the old ones, and peddle them. So they were involved on both ends of it and Marshall was the man in the middle, who talked to God and had John Wayne's name appear by some kind of immaculate inscription on his book.
Presto!
A $30 book becomes $400, and the signature was good enough that nobody questioned it when it was offered for sale.

That's what I thought. I should've thought it earlier.

Too much goes down on faith in the book trade, I thought.

We go by experience. If something looks good and we've got no reason to doubt it, we buy it. Then we sell it, and it passes—perhaps forever—into the vast book world.

Except for extremely valuable signatures, this is how it's always been.

Maybe that'll have to change now.

 

This still didn't begin to solve Laura Marshall's problem. I kept remembering something the Preacher had said to Wally in that moment just before they had seen me standing on the ramp—
You want to go to jail over five thousand cheap books?
Nobody but a grafter talks like that. So the Preacher and the Keelers were grafters, I knew that much, but how did that tie in to Bobby Marshall's murder? Wally and Willie had gone up to see Marshall on the mountain that day, bringing him a new load of books. They didn't know he had been killed.
They didn't know.

Jerry did it.
I kept coming back to that thought. The real motivation had nothing to do with the Preacher or his books. As much as I wanted to make a murder case against these birds, I couldn't.

They rested on the loading dock. For a time they seemed to be sleeping.

“They're rubbing our noses in it,” Todd said.

“And they're just plain tired.”

They started at it again around three o'clock. I could see Wally and the Preacher working around the edges of the truck, and every so often the Preacher would stop and peer down the road. Once he came out and sat on the ramp, taking another obvious break with his legs dangling off the edge.

“He's undecided,” I said. “We all are.”

Todd took a deep breath. I said, “They're afraid to finish. Scared we'll follow them right on across the country.”

At six o'clock Wally left on a breakfast run, returning thirty minutes later with three cold-looking McDonald's bags. I looked at Todd sadly and shrugged. “This won't get any easier. It may be a huge waste of time.”

“But you don't want to leave yet.”

“No, but you can. I'll get back to Denver okay on my own.”

“I'm in no hurry. Just making conversation.”

We sat, and Wally, on one of his smoke breaks, gave us a look that even Todd, half-asleep on the seat beside me, picked up. “They're laughing at us,” he said. “Cocky bastards.”

That's when I gave voice to a notion that had begun stirring around in my head. “How'd you like to sit here and watch while I go over to the house and see what I can find there.”

He sat up and opened his eyes wide. “I hope you don't mean what I think you mean.”

“Just a look around is all I'm thinking.”

“Outside the house or inside?”

I said nothing and felt him squirm on the seat beside me. “Jesus Christ, Janeway, you're not gonna burglarize their house?”

I wished he hadn't said that. All I could do now to keep him from being an accomplice was deny it.

“I'm not burglarizing anything, Todd. Whatever I do, we'll find that out when I get there. All you've got to do is sit here and watch.”

“That's all. Just sit here and watch.”

“That's all. If it starts to look like they're wrapping things up here, you might drive over to the house and blow the horn. If you feel like it.”

“Just blow the horn.”

“Three times. Just drive past and give it three quick blasts. Then you drive on back here and park in this same place. If I don't come in ten minutes, you take off and go back to Alamosa. You turn in the car, get in your airplane, and haul ass for Denver.”

A long, sober moment passed. I drew him a crude map from here to there.

“Naturally, you don't have to do any of this,” I said.

I saw his backbone stiffen. “Hey, don't worry about me, I'll be there.”

I got out and took a small leather tool pouch from my suitcase in the trunk. I hadn't used it in years, but it was like my gun and my credit card:
Don't leave home without it.
It slipped easily into my coat pocket. I waved cheerfully at Todd through the glass and started up the road.

It was a ten-minute walk to the Preacher's house. I made it in eight. My heart quickened as I walked into the long dirt road and saw the grove of trees looming ahead. This would hardly be the first time I had stepped over the line, and the risk always came with a rush. I knew how quickly and badly it could all go wrong. In the old days I worried only about covering my ass and dismissed the ethical argument too easily. Occasionally I had debated it with my lawyer friend Moses, who passionately believed that the end never justifies the means. “Once you step outside the law,” Mose said, “your whole cause sinks right down to the perp's level. Even if you think you're right, the end can't justify the means.” The trouble with that notion, I said to him then, is that it worries too much about rules and not enough about protecting one terrified, flesh-and-blood victim. Look, the system's never going to be perfect anyway, I said loftily, so why not bend it a little if you can put away a true badass who might otherwise slide and could still do great damage? “If you really believe that, why don't you just go out and shoot him?” Mose said. I grinned wickedly but he wasn't worried, he knew what my limits were. I had a strong unwritten code. In it was everything I knew in my heart about right and wrong. Moses knew I wouldn't abuse a suspect. I'd never lie under oath. I wouldn't trump up a case or manufacture evidence. I might open a locked door, but to purists like Moses even that went too far. He wanted the game played according to Hoyle, but Hoyle never had to work three months on a case only to see it disappear because some judge was having a bad-hair day or an essential witness had been intimidated. Hoyle had no idea how much real evil there is in the world: he didn't even know how many rotten lawyers there are, eager to earn a dirty fee by putting some baby-killer back on the street. “Listen to yourself, Cliff,” Moses said. “Can you imagine what would happen if every cop went by the law of the streets? Just do whatever you want, as long as
you
think your cause is right. Jesus Christ, we'd have absolute chaos.” I couldn't speak for other cops: all I could do was counter chaos and Christ with my own logic, earned in the heat of battle. Rules can't cover every situation, I said: sooner or later some decent soul gets the shaft. There are times when the
only
way to get a very bad guy is to play by his rules.

 

The rush came stronger and faster than I remembered it. This situation was different from anything I had done in the old days. I wasn't just a wild-hair cop, putting nobody but myself at risk. Today I represented Laura Marshall, and what I did might have serious consequences for her case. I probably wouldn't be able to use anything I found except for my own information, but sometimes that's enough. A fact discovered illegitimately can lead to a bigger fact, which might suggest a more legitimate path to its so-called discovery. What's the bigger risk, ignorance or jimmying a door? This was what I told myself as I walked up through the trees. In another few hours, whatever was in that house would be gone, maybe forever: maybe burned, maybe shredded, maybe trashed. The Preacher would be gone, the Keeler boys, gone. For all their sudden nonchalance, they were about to disappear, and they might be hell to find again.

I knew how it was to justify an act. But I had a weird feeling this time. I had the creeps but I pushed ahead anyway.

Slowly the garage emerged through the trees, then the house. The place looked as bleak and uninhabited as it would soon be. I took a pair of rubber gloves from my inside coat pocket, ripped open the package, and stuffed the wrapper back in the same pocket. Stepped up to the door. Knocked loudly and stood back.

Nothing.

I looked around at the trees. Peered down the road as far as I could see. Took out my picks and in less than a minute I was inside.

I closed the door. Locked it. Crossed the room. Opened the window, just a crack. Enough, I hoped, that I might hear a horn blow from the road.

I looked in the living room.

Back in the bedroom.

No books, just a pair of unmade beds and a TV set. This would be where the Keeler boys slept.

On the other side, the Preacher's room. No books here either.

I eased into the room. The Preacher's bed, also unmade. But less disorder here.

A bathroom, off to my right. The door open, with sunlight shining in through a window, giving the bedroom a dusty kind of haze: I could see dust swimming in the air, as if something had just disturbed it.

I looked into the bathroom, which was musty and basic. Washbasin, toilet, shower stall in the corner. Dark over there…dingy…the shower curtain scummy, not even a hint of what I assumed was its former opaqueness.

Mold everywhere. These boys were slobs.

Across the bedroom, a filing cabinet. Locked. A wooden cabinet with a tough old-style lock.

It took a while but I got it open.

Files.

Dozens of folders in each drawer. I would never have time to go through it all.

Sift…skim…separate the wheat from the chaff.

Each of the files was labeled with a small, circular tab.

Names of people I didn't know.

Names of companies. Subjects…

Publicity…

Sermon topics…

Clippings…

World catastrophe…

Day of Reckoning…

More of the same in the second drawer.

Miracles…

Events…

Biblical prophesy…

And on and on.

The third drawer looked more promising. A dozen fat files.

Books…

Keeler…

Marshall…

Personal…

I began there, in his personal file. Touched its top pages almost timidly, then leafed quickly through it, and out of the mass of paper the real man emerged.

His name wasn't Kevin Simms, for starters. He was Earl Chaplin of Jonesboro, Arkansas, thirty-six years old last November.

And he wasn't a preacher, except in the most unsavory sense. He had a certificate from some biblical diploma mill and apparently aspired to do his work on television, where he could fleece a flock more effectively and rake in money with both hands. He was the kind of preacher who makes real ministers cringe.

He had an address in Oklahoma, where he intended to establish the roots of his so-called ministry. I took out my notebook and wrote it down.

There was something else about Earl Chaplin. He was a racist.

I leafed through papers from the John Birch Society and the Ku Klux Klan. He had been a kleagle in Alabama, but had resigned five years ago. I could guess why, and it had nothing to do with any sudden change of heart. The kind of ministry he envisioned didn't thrive on a pulpit of open racism, but he still got letters from Klansmen around the country, with references to mud people, sheenys, and right-handed Jesus-lovers.

God was alive, he loved money, and he was all-white. I had only been in the Preacher's house a few minutes and I had already learned these valuable lessons.

He was a compulsive file-keeper. He kept everything, including his grade-school report cards. He had been a mediocre student, a misfit. Notes from a fourth-grade teacher to a parent or guardian:
Earl needs to apply himself. He can do much better.

Why would he keep this kind of stuff? The only answer is no answer at all. There's no accounting for people and what they do.

Quickly now I took down everything I could get about him: all his vitals, everywhere he'd been, everywhere he'd lived, every church where he had held a membership. I had his address in Alabama, his car registration, affiliations, blood type. I had his army deferment. They don't take giants.

From the Keeler file I took down an address in Oklahoma. The brothers had been nickel-and-dime booksellers for years and had known Kevin Simms since his Earl Chaplin days in Arkansas.

Quickly I skimmed some of the Preacher's personal letters. He railed against Democrats and thought even Republicans were communists. What this country needs is some backbone, he wrote. We needed to invade Cuba for real, not pussyfoot around like Kennedy had done. The old John Birch line, with a few worldwide twists. Get Castro, then take care of the Middle East: Iraq, Iran, and Syria. Knock off those three mongrels, cock our guns, and dare any turban-topped gook nation to look at us crosswise.

Time to move on. I had enough stats to find him wherever he tried to hide.

I looked in the
Marshall
file and one thing was immediately clear. He had known Bobby Marshall for several years and they had had a much deeper relationship than Laura knew. There were typewritten, signed letters from 1986, referring to meetings in Denver and on the East Coast. They had gone bookhunting together in New York, sometime last year from the look of it, and the books they talked about were exactly the kind that had recently come into question. Cheap books, common, easy to find, but books that would take a sharp rise in value if signed: nothing too splashy, nothing that might get noticed. Literature if the author was reclusive, thus scarce. But mostly sports figures, film stars, personalities.

The letters were formal throughout:
Dear Mr. Marshall…Dear Mr. Simms.
Marshall had signed his full name,
Robert Charles Marshall,
in light blue ink, fountain pen not ballpoint, and the Preacher had typed his phony initials,
KS,
at the end of his. Marshall's letters were all originals on his letterhead; the Preacher's were carbon or Xerox copies with no signatures.

They were strictly business. A relationship powered by money.

I went through the whole file. This took far more time than I wanted it to.

At some point I looked up, gripped again by that creepy feeling I had brought into the house. Nothing specific: no noises inside or out, not even a chirping bird or a scurrying squirrel outside the window. It was the wrong season for chirping birds, but I was spooked anyway.

I walked to the window and looked down the drive. It looked like some still-life painting. Not even a breeze to flutter the dead leaves.

I watched and I waited. I had enough now, I could button it up, lock everything back the way it had been, and get the hell out. But I couldn't pull myself away.

The thing that bothered me as I dipped back into the file was that the deal between Bobby and the Preacher had no beginning. The earliest letter just appeared, as if their acquaintance had begun in a vacuum, telling nothing of any prior contact. It spoke of a meeting they would have in Gunnison, but there was no indication that they had had others before it. The letter dealt with books as if each knew perfectly well what the other was talking about, yet there had been no foundation to indicate that this was so. One day they might have been strangers, the next day they were partners in crime. Why? Where had this begun? Whose idea had it been? None of those questions, or any of a dozen others I might ask, had even a hint of an answer.

I am bringing some books out next month,
the Preacher wrote at one point.

Don't come out to the house,
Bobby had written.
I will meet you in Gunnison.

A time and a date was mentioned.

I want to keep our transactions strictly between us,
Marshall wrote. And yet the Keeler boys had come driving up to the house, bold as brass, three weeks after the murder. What did that mean? Had they changed their plans by telephone? I looked at more letters but could find no evidence that they had ever spoken on the phone.

Four large book exchanges were discussed in the letters I saw. These spanned two years, and Marshall, in an early letter, insisted that no record be kept of the money that changed hands. But the Preacher had cheated: he was a compulsive record-keeper and a born-again cheat, so he had these crude notes tucked away, chicken scratches on common loose-leaf paper. He had paid Marshall $15,000, cash in a suitcase, for delivery of five hundred books. No mention was made whether this was a full or partial payment. I did the arithmetic and guessed it had been paid in full. Five hundred times two hundred was a hundred grand. The books had probably cost an average of $10—$5,000 for basic seed money—still an $80,000 profit. My best guess was that $200 each would be a very low retail average. And they'd want to keep it low retail to move 'em fast.

Suddenly I saw how I would do it if I were running this scam. I would pay Marshall as little as possible and blow the books out as cheaply as I could. If I went to a book fair with John Wayne's book signed, I'd have a reasonable chance to sell it for four bills. Price it at half that and it would fly out the door. I would want to move them fast without selling much to other dealers. No matter how good the forgeries were, there would be talk if too many turned up at once, so I wouldn't put these out at all before the gates opened. I'd wait until the unwashed public got in, then I'd slip them onto my table two or three or half a dozen at a time. Maybe I'd also have a far-flung little network of dealers I could sell to around the country, dealers who didn't do book fairs and wouldn't think twice about buying a signed book that looked real. As long as I didn't get too greedy in any one place, I'd be fine. Spread the stuff around, let it get absorbed into the vast wasteland, and if the signatures were good enough, they'd never be questioned by anyone. Once they were out there, strewn across the country like manure in a garden, who would know where they had come from? Who would ever see them again?